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题  目：              文化差异对国际商务谈判的影响                     
学  院：                      英语学院                                 
专  业：                        英语                                   
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1. Introduction
With the rapid development of the economic globalization and the frequent business contacts, the importance of business negotiation gets obvious gradually. International business negotiation refers to business parties in different countries and regions in order to meet their needs, using the way of information exchange and consultation to reach the consensus of behavior and process. International business negotiation plays an important role in business activities and a significant process in the constitution of the core competence of the enterprises. The level of international business negotiation to a large extent determines whether enterprise can obtain advantages or not in the international competition. International business negotiation has a complex cross-culture, and it belongs to such a negotiation with different ways of thinking, feeling and behavior, which is much more challenging than the negotiation under the single cultural environment. Negotiators from different countries or regions have different cultural backgrounds, values, ways of thinking, behavioral patterns, communication patterns, languages and customs. For the sake of removing the obstacles to communication with foreign customers, ensuring the smooth progress of the negotiations, business negotiators have to understand and grasp the importance of cultural differences on international business negotiations. This paper reviews from the impact of cultural differences on business negotiation and its strategies.
2. Literature review
2.1. Analysis of the Domestic and Abroad Research Actualities
Business negotiation as the booming field of domestic research is in its infancy in many aspects, and now there are a large number of scholars having done a lot of theoretical and practical researches, but blank spots are still exiting. According to the informed literature reviews, we can see that there are still some problems need to studying and resolving. First of all, on the aspect business negotiation strategies, informed literature reviews have studied from the negotiation’s overall preparation and the selection of negotiation patterns. But with the negotiation is more and more important in the global trade, negotiating strategies are no longer limited to the negotiation itself; it should be more outward expansion. Negotiation is a combination of Economics, linguistics, psychology, manners and so many integrated-subjects; therefore, in formulating negotiating strategies, we are supposed to pay more attention to the application of different subjects in a variety of negotiations to make negotiation strategies achieve optimal performance, it is not just simple accumulation of each subject. Secondly, when dealing with cultural differences, a lot of informed literature reviews have concentrated on that how to overcome the barriers of cultural differences in international business negotiation. But the reality is that a successful negotiation is not only a game on the negotiation table, the preparation period of the negotiations play a crucial role in the negotiations. Many of the current domestic researches study separately, which leads to the consequence that there are fewer studies on the preparation of business negotiation. With the development of the negotiation, overcoming cultural differences is not just confined to a study on the negotiation table. Last, facing the problems of language in the business negotiation, we can combine the language in use with the overall strategies in business negotiation, because language as one important kind of tools in negotiation, it should be studied in a specific environment, which will be conducive to make a wider and more vigorous study on the language application problems in business negotiation.
Researchers have approached business negotiation from various disciplines such as political science, social psychology, or organization, cross-cultural, marketing, and communications. But most of the scholars abroad focus on the use of strategies and tactics from the managerial view and the Chinese scholars concentrate on the behaviors and the strategies used in all kinds of negotiations, but do not pay enough attention to the study of the impact of other cultural differences on international business negotiation such as values and ways of thinking. It’s not surprising that the last 20 years have seen an endless stream of books and articles on business negotiation in the West. Many of them are best-sellers. Many scholars have done a lot of work on business negotiation. Numerous books and articles, from different perspectives, have been written about the complexities of negotiating cross culture, and they lay stress on the influence of many cultural differences on international business negotiation. In China, so far, not very many publications on business negotiations are known until the early 1990’s. Hu Gengshen(1992) claims that it is of great necessity to introduce and learn the foreign theories and skills concerning International business negotiation. Some bargaining strategies and tactics are also discussed in the international business negotiation. In the 20th century, especially the years since the rise of China in the world economy, more and more scholars work on the research of international business negotiation in order to meet the needs of society; meanwhile they hope that it will shed some light on English for special purpose study on international business negotiation.
Study on the impact of cultural differences on international business negotiations is mainly carried out by scholars in North America, particularly in France, Holland, Sweden, Argentina and Russia. In the 1990s, the researches focused on the problems related to: culture influences on the negotiation process and the outcome of negotiation, the linkage between culture and negotiation situation, practical recommendations for professionals, as well as research and methodology issues. “The impact of cultural differences in international sales negotiation” is divided into four classes by Gurry (2004): Behavioral intentions of the participants, basic concept of the negotiation and negotiation strategies, negotiating processes (agenda-setting, scheduling, information processing, communication, tactics, and the development of relations) and result orientations. Austrian negotiation expert Kremenyuk (2002) in the book international negotiations points out that international business negotiation has three main components: a background factors, atmosphere and process, and each section is under the influence of cultural factors, such as different meaning and significance of the time, the role of individuals in a collectivity, the importance of communication and personal relationships. In some recent researches on the international negotiation, scholars have stressed on cultural variables or integrated cultural elements in the relevant models and examples, and related methods can be divided into the following four categories: structure-program method, behavior, awareness-strategy and procedure. Also, the local researches of international negotiation have expanded to China and Nepal. In recent years, the people's awareness of the impact of cultural differences on negotiation activities, negotiating business industry and academia at home and abroad all have this consensus, but they have the different opinions on the question that how to overcome the cultural barriers.
2.2. Impact of Cultural Differences on Business Negotiation
Some researchers have questioned the very fact that cultural differences have an impact on international business negotiations, arguing that negotiation is negotiation irrespective of where and with whom it takes places. Zartman(1993:19) has phrased it in strong term: Culture is to negotiation what birds flying into engines are to flying airplanes or, at most, what weather is to aerodynamics—practical impediments that need to be taken into account (and avoided) once the basic process is fully understood and implemented.
However, there is now much empirical support for the view that culture has an impact on business negotiation (Brett & Okumura 1998; Bazerman et al. 2000; Adair et al. 2001; Adler 2002). Support is coming as well from authors actually involved in international negotiations (Schuster & Copeland 1999; Saner, 2000). When negotiating internationally, one needs cultural knowledge and skills in intercultural communication. Many agreements have to be negotiated, drafted, sighed and finally implemented: sales contracts, licensing agreements, joint ventures and various kinds of partnerships, agency and distribution agreements, turnkey contracts, etc.. Negotiation is not only based on legal and business matters, hard facts which are often emphasized as being the sole important facts, but also on the quality of human an social relations.
In China, Tang Manlan and Lv Xiaoyan (2009) points out that business negotiation in essence is a special manifestation of interpersonal relationships, and thinking habits, language arts, psychological needs of human are all based on specific culture. Therefore, it should be noted that there have been cultural differences between two or more parties in a business negotiation. In many factors impacted by cultural differences, communications, values, ways of thinking are the three main factors.
2.2.1. Communications
Communication is a program covey concepts or ideas from one person to another or interpersonal transfer, the purpose is to make the people receiving communication get the understanding in thinking. Communication is the exchange and flow of information and ideas from one person to another; it involves a sender transmitting an idea, information, or feeling to a receiver. Effective communication occurs only if the receiver understands the exact information or idea that the sender intended to transmit. Many of the problems that occur in an organization are the either the direct result of people failing to communicate and/or processes, which leads to confusion and can cause good plans to fail (Mistry et al. 2008). Communication can be defined as social interaction through information. The ways of people communicate contains verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication mainly refers to oral communication, which typically relies on languages. Language determines culture, and there is a close relationship between verbal communication and culture (Hu Zhuanglin, 2001). Even the negotiators share the same cultural background, they also have about 10%~20% information misunderstood or mistaken. Then in international business negotiation, using foreign language or the second language to communicate can make the proportion of misunderstanding or mistaken rise dramatically. International business negotiation is always faced with language barriers. In addition to verbal communication, negotiators can also use non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication means the factors with the value of outputting or receiving besides language factors information in a certain communicative environment, these factors can be generated artificially or created by the environment (Samorar et al. 1981). Research has shown that information from languages is not more than 35% in face-to-face communication and 65% information is transmitted through non-verbal forms (Liu Jianming, 2006). Gestures, kinesics, eye contact, facial expressions, costumes and taking advantage of time and space are the primary ways of non-verbal communication. These are not with the certain symbols and significance like languages, which is easy to misunderstand; different cultures will have different ways of non-verbal communication.
2.2.2. Values
Values can be defined as important and enduring beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or desirable and what is not. Values exert major influence on the behavior of an individual and serve as broad guidelines in all situations. Values is the fundamental starting point deciding the actions taken and opinions held by people (Hu Wenzhong, 2003), which directly affects the way of people’s thinking and resolving problems. Different cultures have different values. Social psychologist Hoffstetter concludes “individualism-collectivism” into the important dimensionality of the difference of Eastern and Western cultural values (Guan Shijie, 1995:156). In thousands of years of feudal culture breeding, the social class concept allows Chinese emphasis on collective responsibility and individual power, so called “centralization”. While Westerners, the more stress the collective power, that is, “decentralization”, and they emphasize personal responsibility. Westerners believe that responsibilities, powers are closely linked to the accurate information, and consist of personal mastery. Everyone should give full play to their initiative, stress efficiency, complete set objectives to solve practical problems under the leadership of a superior. Triandis estimated that 70% of the world's population living in the culture with characteristics of collectivism (Triandis, 1990:48). This may be because they are vulnerable, and the fields of economy, science and technology's development lag behind for a long time, which not only causes the weakness of country's economic foundation, but also leads personal abilities and opportunities to shrink greatly, and it makes individuals be more dependent on the collective power of the State, others or social organizations whether they fight against nature or seek survival and development in society. Different cultures, nations and countries have different levels of individualism or collectivism. It may also be shown as a continuum; people in some countries have stronger individualism, while some countries’ people have stronger collectivism. Among these countries, the more develop the countries are, the stronger the individualism is, and of course it's the same in reverse.
2.2.3. Ways of thinking
In the process of international business negotiation, thinking is the driving force of the negotiation. United States scholar Stewart (2005) in the book American Cultural Patterns: a Cross-Cultural Perspective pointed out that Americans have the abstract analysis and practical thinking orientation. Their thinking process is proceeding from concrete facts, and from which, they summarize and draw conclusions. Europeans are more thoughtful and theoretical, their way of thinking has focused on the perception of the world and symbolic thinking, they like to use logical means to deduce from one concept to another, and they rely on the power of thought. Chinese prefer to use imagery thinking and comprehensive thinking, and they used to uniting different parts as a whole and taking the all the aspects into consideration. Many international business negotiations have to stop or postpone just because negotiators are unable to adapt to opponent's way of thinking which leads to the unhappy consequences. If differences in way of thinking cannot be removed, it must lead to the result of facing with obstacles to negotiation between two sides, such as the Americans pay attention to facts; they make clearness between people and matters in the negotiation process. Chinese pay attention to integrated whole and take everything into consideration; Europeans have good logical thinking and tightly negotiation details. Many Americans like to come to the straight point when negotiating; many Chinese are able to talk about some digression before formal negotiation to adjust the atmosphere.
2.3. The Strategies of Dealing with Cultural Differences in International Business Negotiations
First, in international business negotiation, the awareness of cross-cultural communication should be cultivated and strengthened. “Intercultural communication is a discipline with an obvious feature of practical applicability. It is more of a practical, ‘physical phenomena’ subject. It has the advantages of strong operability, high empirical value and practical meaning.” (Gao Yihong, 2000:187) Indeed, intercultural communication has a wide applicability and can be applied to international business negotiation. Secondly, in order to achieve the success of negotiation, negotiators have to overcome communication barriers. In international business negotiation, because of cultural differences, verbal and non-verbal communication will bring obstacles to the negotiation. Thus, active and effective communication strategies are very important. Gan Changyin (1999, 2001) points out that mild expressions，which may be used to affect the feelings and emotions in negotiation，are of great help to maintain a cooperative relationship between the parties concerned. He further points out that it is more crucial for negotiators to use different language forms cooperatively and harmoniously rather than use them respectively. Wu Lamei & Yang Lincong (2001) outline that there are four pragmatic strategies most commonly used in negotiations according to Grice’s CP theory: euphemism, humor, vagueness and approbation. Then, the negotiators should be flexible to create multiculture serviced on both sides. Due to different cultures, different ways of thinking, different values and other differences, international business negotiation is easy to come to a deadlock. In this case, both parties should work actively and creatively, to be flexible and offer constructive suggestions in consultation. The parties of cross-cultural negotiation should have the courage to develop their own culture and taking the cross-culture into account.
All in all, cross cultural factors such as communication, ways of thinking and values, whose impact on international business negotiations are recessive and potential but must not be ignored. Persons involved in international business negotiations only understand the various factors of cross-cultural communication, and combine negotiation skills and strategies so that they would have the ability to control the negotiation, achieve cultural integration between the two sides and win-win goals.
3. Conclusion
Author believes that international business negotiation and culture are inseparable. Fully understand the cultural differences and conduct to research in the area to minimize and avoid the negative effects of cultural differences is one of the main challenges faced by enterprises after joining WTO. High quality communication in international business negotiation can better solve the problems arising from cultural differences. Negotiators should establish the correct cultural negotiation awareness, be fully prepared and use accomplished negotiation skills to make successful negotiation. Author hopes that there will be more and more researches on this project.
References
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